The appointment of Matthieu Blazy represents the biggest change in what has been the most disruptive year in fashion in decades. Photo: The New York Times
The hottest job in fashion has finally been filled. After six months without an artistic director, Chanel, the second-largest luxury fashion brand in the world and the only couture house in the top three, has named a new designer: Matthieu Blazy.
Most recently the man behind Bottega Veneta, Blazy will be in charge of all fashion, couture and accessories for Chanel, creating 10 collections a year.
He will make his debut in October during the Paris shows.
The appointment represents the biggest change in what has been the most disruptive year in fashion in decades, with seven other fashion houses naming new designers.
Aside from Blazy, there will be debuts in 2025 at Celine, Givenchy, Lanvin, Calvin Klein, Tom Ford, Alberta Ferretti, Dries Van Noten – and now, Bottega Veneta. Especially because it is clear that Blazy has been charged with sending Chanel, with its enormous reach and influence, in a new direction.
“We have a lot of confidence in Matthieu’s capacity to bring modernity and a different approach to Chanel,” Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president for fashion, said during a video interview.
“Matthieu has respect for the heritage but also a very specific design for ready-to-wear, for silhouettes, for bags, and we like it quite a lot. We want him to push, to test, to go where he feels is right. We don’t want to give the feeling that the brand is stuck.”
Chanel needs to be “pertinent”, Pavlovsky said – and Blazy, he said, “is a talent for tomorrow".
"For sure, he is a talent today, but he’ll be bigger tomorrow.”
Read more: Chanel names Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy as new artistic director
Chanel, which reported revenues of almost US$20bil (approximately RM89mil) in 2023, is the rare luxury brand known for its clothing as well as its leather goods, fragrance and beauty lines, and is the only one of the top 10 fashion houses that remains in private hands.
As such, it has powerful brand recognition and a semiology (camellias, pearls, boucle, quilting, double C) that is practically synonymous with French chic.
And without the need to offer quarterly public reports, it has the benefit of time to make change pay off – which makes the job as lead designer a luxury in itself.
Chanel has, however, been effectively treading water since the death of Karl Lagerfeld, the man who largely invented the template of the modern designer at a heritage house, in 2019.
Virginie Viard, Lagerfeld’s right hand for decades, inherited his mantle but proved more of a placeholder than a creative director.
In her five years as head designer, she never managed to make the house her own; such innovations as an inexplicable focus on shorts did not appeal to the youth market. Indeed, the internet regularly disparaged the red carpet looks on house ambassadors such as Margot Robbie and Margaret Qualley.
Which explains the months of speculation that had almost every designer in the industry interviewing for the spot.
First, Hedi Slimane, the former Celine designer, was hotly rumoured for the job. Thom Browne and Daniel Roseberry of Schiaparelli were mentioned.
So was Simon Porte Jacquemus. So was Pieter Mulier, Blazy’s former partner and the designer of Alaïa.
John Galliano’s name was floated; so were those of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of the Row after the Wertheimers, the family that owns Chanel, invested in their brand. Marc Jacobs threw his own hat in the ring.
Models walk the runway during Chanel's ready-to-wear collection for Autumn/Winter 2017 during Paris Fashion Week. Photo: The New York Times
Blazy’s name emerged in November in the luxury media outlet Miss Tweed.
According to Pavlovsky, though, only three candidates were seriously considered as contenders, and Blazy, whom he initially met in July, very quickly emerged as first choice.
“There are many talented people,” Pavlovsky said, “But we need more than that.”
A lanky 40-year-old who grew up in Paris, Blazy has been the creative director of Bottega Veneta since 2021, where his design has emphasised handwork and experimentation, and he has made craftspeople central to the brand’s story – and his design process.
Under Blazy, Bottega Veneta was regularly heralded as presenting one of the best collections in Milan, thanks in part to the trompe l’oeil techniques – leather that looked like denim, leather that looked like raffia – that he introduced.
Bottega Veneta became one of the rare bright spots in the portfolio of Kering, its parent company, which also owns Gucci, Balenciaga, McQueen and Saint Laurent. As of the most recent report, it was the group’s only fashion brand with revenues that rose in the third quarter of 2024.
Before Bottega Veneta, Blazy worked with Raf Simons at Calvin Klein and Phoebe Philo at Celine, and before that, he ran the artisanal couture line of Maison Margiela.
The time at Calvin Klein exposed him to the workings of a megabrand, and his experience at Maison Margiela exposed him to a couture house – key attractions for Chanel, Pavlovsky said.
Read more: Chanel's answer to not having a chief designer... is to double down on China?
Chanel is significantly bigger than Bottega Veneta, with more than 600 stores as well as a couture studio and a group of specialist ateliers (embroiderer Lesage, goldsmith Goossens) owned under Chanel’s Paraffection subsidiary.
In a news release, Blazy said he looked “forward to meeting all the teams and writing this new chapter together.”
Blazy will officially join Chanel in April. The studio design team will be responsible for the couture collections in January and July and the ready-to-wear show in March.
In an unusual statement in modern fashion, in which designers rarely last longer than 10 years at a top post, and many leave after three, Pavlovsky said he saw the relationship with Blazy as a “long-term” commitment.
“We are not trying to put everything on the table from day one,” he said. “I hope that Chanel can support this vision for many years, and to do it with an impact.”
For that, he added, “We need to give it time.” – ©2024 The New York Times Company
